Why do most entrepreneurs fear delegation so much? Partly because their businesses are their babies and they think that only they know what's best for them. It feels awkward, even dangerous to leave their baby in the hands of strangers. All of those what-ifs pop into their brain and before they've even thought the issue through, they've ruled out delegation altogether. Part of it is also the mistaken belief that they need to work harder to succeed. They feel that the hours, effort, and anxiety they put into their business, the more they will get out of it.
And the problem is obvious: our business is our baby! It's our heart and soul and we will fight anybody who will touch it!
I've been around long enough to know that owners often have difficulty separating the business's concept from all of the little intricacies that go into the actual production.
By default we think that as business owners we are supposed to be involved in every aspect of our business; that we have to know everything about everything that is involved in the process of the creation of the final product and that's the way it should be if you want to run your own business.
That's completely backward!
A lot of the time, it's this attitude and idea that drive most small businesses right into the ground.
Step back and look at things from a different perspective. What is the essence of a business? Why did we want to be business owners? Was it the sheer joy of providing fresh bread or superior toilet cleaning services to customers? Or was it the ability to make money doing something we actually liked?
Isn't that financial independence and prosperity is the reason why we took the leap of faith and went into business for ourselves?
So when we consider a new opportunity we have to calculate ahead of time: are we going to make money on it or we just know how to bake bread and clean floors and we assume that if we own the entire business it will automatically make money for us.
Ultimately, your work as an entrepreneur is to invest available resources at a rate of return that exceeds the price that you pay for them.
That's the hard part! Just look at all of the articles that go into your business's overhead! Do you even know what they all are? Really?
Everything has a price! The faster you realize it the better! There is nothing free!
Know where this road's headed? You got it, the value of your time!
The inability or unwillingness to stick a concrete price on the time they spend running their business can cut the legs out from under any entrepreneur before they even get started. They seem to forget that if somebody was paying them to do all of the things that they do, they'd be making a pretty good chunk of change. For some reason, everyone thinks that if they do something themselves, the labor is somehow free. Nobody thinks ahead that far but the issue would never even come up if owners budgeted for every aspect of their business before-hand.
Haven't you met business-owners who never has time available or money available because "You know, we run our own business, things are tough?"
Things are not supposed to be tough unless you make them this way!
Budgeting correctly can save you so much hassle and frustration. Set aside funds for accountants, a receptionist, loading dock workers, even a janitor. Do it or you'll find yourself "doing it" and trying to figure out just how doing it yourself makes it "free."
Everything has a price! That means your time too!
As an average small business owner you want to make average small business money, right? It should be high six- low seven- figures per year, on average $1,000,000.00 per year (according to John Assaroff), or $420.00 per hour!
So, every time you do anything for your business other than making a decision, you should ask yourself: "Can I buy it for less then $420.00 per hour?" and if you can - you should!
Another problem is - what if you can't? Then you have to be honest with yourself - your business idea does not have enough upside to support itself and you should immediately abandon it! And by "immediately" I mean IMMEDIATELY!
The thing that made us choose to the life of a business owner was the ability to be free from all of the restrictions of being somebody else's employee. We wanted to earn more, travel farther, work fewer hours, spend more time with our families, and be financially stable.
If we aren't getting those things, why put up with the hassle?
Robert Kiyosaki explains the difference between a business and a job this way: if you can leave it for a year and find it still running and even grown when you come back - it's a business, if it dies the next day you leave - it's a job!
So when we are talking about home based business we should be open to the idea of delegating most of the activities to outsourcers: article and press-release writing and submission, link building, social media communications, message boards and forums postings, content development and distribution, etc.
You may think that delegation entails losing some aspect of control, but in reality it's about gaining control.
Do what you are the best at - business development and strategizing - and let somebody else handle all the technical details.
I remember, in the beginning of my real estate investing I was flipping houses: you buy a falling apart house, fix it up and sell hopefully making some money at the end. I was trying to do everything myself, because you can't let somebody else mess it up! It's my baby! Nobody else can hang drywall better than I can and nobody can install a new toilet the unique way I do it!
It would take me forever to finish one property and after having spent so much time and effort on it you get really frustrated when a prospective buyer refuses to see how special that house is. All they see is one more three bedroom house among the other three bedroom houses on the market!
And at some point I partnered up with a group of people who had been flipping houses for quite a while as well and, seeing how attached I get to the house we were renovating, they shared with me their approach: they would actually make an effort not to be at the property during the renovation process, they actually hired a project manager to supervise the process and to avoid the need for them to be at the property. They were subbing out everything, focusing only on acquisition and selling aspects of the business. This approach allowed them to avoid falling in love with each property and to become the biggest company on the market within literally a few months!
I have another great example for you.
Back home, in Russia, we have this belief that has been around for decades: you have to grow your own potatoes, because if you do it yourself - it's free. I'm not joking!
Financial background didn't matter at all. Everybody planted their own potatoes! It takes a lot of effort to plant potatoes in the spring and harvest them in the fall when you're doing all the work by hand!
I would always ask my parents why they didn't just buy the things at the grocery store. They were dirt cheap but my parents would always answer that by growing the potatoes themselves they were free.
I hadn't been to college yet, but I was already feeling that it wasn't the way to go, that this one-sided self-sufficiency was wrong, but I couldn't figure out why everybody was still doing it.
Finally, when I had gone off to college, harvest time came around. I told my family not to worry about the harvest, that I could handle it myself. "Are you sure" they asked. I could tell they were really feeling awkward about it because harvesting your own crop was "the in thing." "Sure," I said. "I can handle it."
I remember I went down to this place where jobless men used to gather and offered them some hard cash for their labor. They had all of the potatoes harvested before the day was over.
I didn't tell my family what happened because they would consider it almost sacrilegious!
Plus, they were so proud of me!
And, eventually, in college, I learned that I was right, when I read in the book the words that I remember by heart: "A world of individual self-sufficiency would be a world with extremely low living standards. Trade allows people to specialize in activities they can do well and to buy from others goods and services they can not easily produce. Specialization and trade go hand in hand because there is no motivation to achieve gains from specialization without being able to trade goods and services produced for goods and services desired. That's why economists use the term "gains from trade" to embrace the results of both."
So I was right!
It sounds like poetry to me!
One more time: you don't have to do everything in your business and you don't have to be good at everything in your business!
As John Assaroff told me: "Hire people who play at what you have to work."
The faster you learn how to delegate, the faster you will be able to develop your business to the point where you can finally move to Costa Rica, learn how to surf and get to spend day after day on the beach with your family relaxing and drinking those fruity drinks with little umbrellas!
You are a business owner! That's what you do: you own your business!
Let somebody else handle the technical aspects and that's when you will experience the freedom you started your business for in the first place! - 16003
And the problem is obvious: our business is our baby! It's our heart and soul and we will fight anybody who will touch it!
I've been around long enough to know that owners often have difficulty separating the business's concept from all of the little intricacies that go into the actual production.
By default we think that as business owners we are supposed to be involved in every aspect of our business; that we have to know everything about everything that is involved in the process of the creation of the final product and that's the way it should be if you want to run your own business.
That's completely backward!
A lot of the time, it's this attitude and idea that drive most small businesses right into the ground.
Step back and look at things from a different perspective. What is the essence of a business? Why did we want to be business owners? Was it the sheer joy of providing fresh bread or superior toilet cleaning services to customers? Or was it the ability to make money doing something we actually liked?
Isn't that financial independence and prosperity is the reason why we took the leap of faith and went into business for ourselves?
So when we consider a new opportunity we have to calculate ahead of time: are we going to make money on it or we just know how to bake bread and clean floors and we assume that if we own the entire business it will automatically make money for us.
Ultimately, your work as an entrepreneur is to invest available resources at a rate of return that exceeds the price that you pay for them.
That's the hard part! Just look at all of the articles that go into your business's overhead! Do you even know what they all are? Really?
Everything has a price! The faster you realize it the better! There is nothing free!
Know where this road's headed? You got it, the value of your time!
The inability or unwillingness to stick a concrete price on the time they spend running their business can cut the legs out from under any entrepreneur before they even get started. They seem to forget that if somebody was paying them to do all of the things that they do, they'd be making a pretty good chunk of change. For some reason, everyone thinks that if they do something themselves, the labor is somehow free. Nobody thinks ahead that far but the issue would never even come up if owners budgeted for every aspect of their business before-hand.
Haven't you met business-owners who never has time available or money available because "You know, we run our own business, things are tough?"
Things are not supposed to be tough unless you make them this way!
Budgeting correctly can save you so much hassle and frustration. Set aside funds for accountants, a receptionist, loading dock workers, even a janitor. Do it or you'll find yourself "doing it" and trying to figure out just how doing it yourself makes it "free."
Everything has a price! That means your time too!
As an average small business owner you want to make average small business money, right? It should be high six- low seven- figures per year, on average $1,000,000.00 per year (according to John Assaroff), or $420.00 per hour!
So, every time you do anything for your business other than making a decision, you should ask yourself: "Can I buy it for less then $420.00 per hour?" and if you can - you should!
Another problem is - what if you can't? Then you have to be honest with yourself - your business idea does not have enough upside to support itself and you should immediately abandon it! And by "immediately" I mean IMMEDIATELY!
The thing that made us choose to the life of a business owner was the ability to be free from all of the restrictions of being somebody else's employee. We wanted to earn more, travel farther, work fewer hours, spend more time with our families, and be financially stable.
If we aren't getting those things, why put up with the hassle?
Robert Kiyosaki explains the difference between a business and a job this way: if you can leave it for a year and find it still running and even grown when you come back - it's a business, if it dies the next day you leave - it's a job!
So when we are talking about home based business we should be open to the idea of delegating most of the activities to outsourcers: article and press-release writing and submission, link building, social media communications, message boards and forums postings, content development and distribution, etc.
You may think that delegation entails losing some aspect of control, but in reality it's about gaining control.
Do what you are the best at - business development and strategizing - and let somebody else handle all the technical details.
I remember, in the beginning of my real estate investing I was flipping houses: you buy a falling apart house, fix it up and sell hopefully making some money at the end. I was trying to do everything myself, because you can't let somebody else mess it up! It's my baby! Nobody else can hang drywall better than I can and nobody can install a new toilet the unique way I do it!
It would take me forever to finish one property and after having spent so much time and effort on it you get really frustrated when a prospective buyer refuses to see how special that house is. All they see is one more three bedroom house among the other three bedroom houses on the market!
And at some point I partnered up with a group of people who had been flipping houses for quite a while as well and, seeing how attached I get to the house we were renovating, they shared with me their approach: they would actually make an effort not to be at the property during the renovation process, they actually hired a project manager to supervise the process and to avoid the need for them to be at the property. They were subbing out everything, focusing only on acquisition and selling aspects of the business. This approach allowed them to avoid falling in love with each property and to become the biggest company on the market within literally a few months!
I have another great example for you.
Back home, in Russia, we have this belief that has been around for decades: you have to grow your own potatoes, because if you do it yourself - it's free. I'm not joking!
Financial background didn't matter at all. Everybody planted their own potatoes! It takes a lot of effort to plant potatoes in the spring and harvest them in the fall when you're doing all the work by hand!
I would always ask my parents why they didn't just buy the things at the grocery store. They were dirt cheap but my parents would always answer that by growing the potatoes themselves they were free.
I hadn't been to college yet, but I was already feeling that it wasn't the way to go, that this one-sided self-sufficiency was wrong, but I couldn't figure out why everybody was still doing it.
Finally, when I had gone off to college, harvest time came around. I told my family not to worry about the harvest, that I could handle it myself. "Are you sure" they asked. I could tell they were really feeling awkward about it because harvesting your own crop was "the in thing." "Sure," I said. "I can handle it."
I remember I went down to this place where jobless men used to gather and offered them some hard cash for their labor. They had all of the potatoes harvested before the day was over.
I didn't tell my family what happened because they would consider it almost sacrilegious!
Plus, they were so proud of me!
And, eventually, in college, I learned that I was right, when I read in the book the words that I remember by heart: "A world of individual self-sufficiency would be a world with extremely low living standards. Trade allows people to specialize in activities they can do well and to buy from others goods and services they can not easily produce. Specialization and trade go hand in hand because there is no motivation to achieve gains from specialization without being able to trade goods and services produced for goods and services desired. That's why economists use the term "gains from trade" to embrace the results of both."
So I was right!
It sounds like poetry to me!
One more time: you don't have to do everything in your business and you don't have to be good at everything in your business!
As John Assaroff told me: "Hire people who play at what you have to work."
The faster you learn how to delegate, the faster you will be able to develop your business to the point where you can finally move to Costa Rica, learn how to surf and get to spend day after day on the beach with your family relaxing and drinking those fruity drinks with little umbrellas!
You are a business owner! That's what you do: you own your business!
Let somebody else handle the technical aspects and that's when you will experience the freedom you started your business for in the first place! - 16003
About the Author:
Author: Pavel Becker is a known contributor of articles about On-Line Marketing and Small Business Development. To find out how to make money on-line go to his blog PavelBecker.com
